A new report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s Office revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released 13,000 detained illegal immigrants last year after agents determined they were not “enforcement priorities.”
In addition, the report determined ICE is not gathering enough data on their “prosecutoral discretion” policy and without that data its impossible to determine if the policy is working in any meaningful way.
“According to the policy, the data is to be collected to promote public confidence in the department’s immigration enforcement activities and to provide greater transparency in annual reporting of DHS’ removal statistics,” the report said.
“DHS does not collect and analyze data on the use of prosecutorial discretion to fully assess its current immigration enforcement activities and to develop future policy,” it added. “The department also does not have a mechanism to continuously monitor its use of prosecutorial discretion and improve future policy.”
The report noted as an example that ICE had only a rough count of how many illegal immigrants it released because they did not fit the new enforcement priority.
“For example in FY 2014, ICE recorded 12,757 instances in which an ICE officer, after interviewing an individual and determining he or she was not an enforcement priority, used prosecutorial discretion to release the alien,” the report said. “However, according to ICE, the prosecutorial discretion data may not always be accurate and complete.”
In other words, the 13,000 figure is just a guess and it is likely to be way too low. It also means the American people have no idea how many illegals have been released by ICE, their whereabouts or any way to ensure they actually show up for future hearings.
